Homestead was the Ethereum network upgrade activated in March 2016 after the original Frontier release.
Frontier was Ethereum’s initial public release, launched in July 2015. It provided the basic blockchain, ether transfers, and smart-contract functionality, but it was considered an early platform intended mainly for developers and technically experienced users.
Homestead was the first major planned upgrade to Ethereum. It improved network stability and removed the protocol’s canary contract, which had marked the system as experimental. The upgrade also made it easier for developers and users to operate Ethereum nodes and applications.
Homestead is sometimes confused with Metropolis, the later upgrade family that included Byzantium and Constantinople. It also predates The Merge, which changed Ethereum’s consensus mechanism in 2022.