CockroachDB relies heavily on multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) to offer consistency guarantees. MVCC, by design, requires the database to keep multiple revisions of values. A buildup of these revisions can impact query execution costs for certain workloads. In this article, we introduce the idea of Protected Timestamps: a novel way for CockroachDB to efficiently retain only relevant revisions, while safely deleting (garbage collecting) old ones.