16,600+ registered wardens, 511 audits, and 1,607 unique high-severity vulns made C4 more than another audit vendor; it was DeFi's public bug archive and junior auditor bootcamp. Immunefi absorbing bounty customers keeps live programs from getting stranded, but it also concentrates researcher flow on one venue while contest economics get squeezed by AI spam, lower platform fees, and sponsors trying to arbitrage payouts. With Q1 DeFi losses still around $169M across 34 protocols, losing a public competitive-audit pipeline is terrible timing for every new L2, restaking vault, and RWA wrapper shipping unaudited complexity.

Top comment by @Benthic