In a blog post by Charlie Custer, CockroachDB introduces its new distributed functions feature with a focus on user-defined functions (UDFs), aimed at enhancing database efficiency by reducing the number of trips between applications and databases. This innovation is designed for modern distributed databases and seeks to overcome the limitations of traditional UDFs, which tend to create bottlenecks by being executed on a single node. CockroachDB's distributed UDFs promise high availability, scalability, and compatibility, particularly with Postgres databases, making it easier for users transitioning from legacy systems. The blog provides examples of UDFs, illustrating their potential for a variety of tasks, such as converting timestamps into human-readable formats, and highlights the ongoing development towards a comprehensive vision of distributed database functions including triggers and stored procedures.