As DeFi expands rapidly, public finance—a field deeply rooted in the centralized management of revenues, expenditures, and debt—faces a reckoning. Governments around the world are beginning to grapple with the implications of a decentralized world where financial services are not just borderless, but algorithmically controlled, resistant to censorship, and increasingly popular among younger, tech-savvy populations. The critical question now is not whether public finance will adapt to the rise of DeFi, but how—and how quickly. […]