CockroachDB no longer stores each non-primary-key column in a separate value by default - you're right that that's less efficient than necessary.

You can now explicitly specify the layout of your table data across keys via CockroachDB column familes: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/column-families.ht...

By default, since several years ago, all data in a table is stored in the same column family.