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Right. It's not really a block-chain, but a block-tree (whatever that is supposed to be).

I suspect to make smart contracts work, one needs a different time-stamping/incentive system altogether (non-blockchain), but haven't seen any progress in that direction.

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For more information on the block tree see the GHOST protocol paper, which predates Ethereum. It does collapse into a linear chain for all but the most recent blocks.

http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf

I know that paper. The authors have no background in distributed systems and use math to prove absurd things. If you look at the core proposed algorithm, it's not even a P2P algorithm.

Eh? It's P2P just like Bitcoin. The only difference is how forks are resolved.

Bitcoin nodes choose the longest chain they see. Another way to put that is: at any forking point, Bitcoin nodes choose the block with the longest chain after it.

GHOST nodes choose the block with the most total computation after it (which may include additional branches).

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