Carrot joins Gauntlet, PrimeFi, and Elemental DeFi as projects suffering material damage from Drift contagion, and the list may not be complete. The pattern that emerges from both the Drift and Kelp exploits in April is that DeFi's interconnected architecture, which enables the composability and yield opportunities that attract users and capital, creates systemic fragility that individual protocol audits cannot fully address. When a protocol at the center of an ecosystem is compromised, the damage radiates outward through every integration, dependency, and shared liquidity pool in ways that are difficult to predict or contain. For users, the practical lesson from Carrot's closure is to understand not just the security of the protocol you deposit into, but the security of every protocol it is integrated with, because the distinction between a direct hack and contagion from a partner hack may be irrelevant to the outcome for your funds.