A line no one can cut.
The thesis: order is not a feature of a queue — it is the queue.
Two words run this note: your turn.
Every queue you have ever stood in worked on one rule: whoever arrived first is served first. And every queue you have ever stood in was cut — by a priority lane, by a friend of the person counting, by whoever held the clipboard and decided the rule applied downward but not sideways. The rule was real. The enforcement was a person.
On-chain fees have the same shape. A token describes what its fee is for. The description is sincere. Then the fee gathers in a wallet someone controls, the queue of things it was for lives in a post somewhere, and “in turn” lasts exactly as long as nobody gains by jumping it.
Now look at a trade on Tallystick. It leaves a 2% Paring — and the Paring lands beyond any account’s reach. It opens a Notch — and the Notch joins a queue the contract keeps itself. When a Tallage runs, and anyone may run one, it marks the oldest live Notch before any younger one, because no function can do it another way. Your turn is not managed. Your turn is the machinery.
That is the entire thesis. A queue is fair not when someone trustworthy holds the clipboard, but when there is no clipboard: when the order is a contractual fact, the fee can go nowhere else, and the record of every mark is public.
Tallystick has no promises to keep. It has a Scoreline, and the Scoreline keeps itself. The line no one can cut is the line that cuts itself — one Notch at a time, in opening order.