Etheurem’s long-awaited network update known as Constantinople is set to be executed at a block number 7,280,000, which is scheduled to take place on Thursday, February 28. Although this hard fork event is widely seen as being bullish in the long term, Ethereum(ETH)’s historical data indicates that ETH price will likely drop even lower next month.

The Constantinople hard fork was initially scheduled to go live earlier in January,but a major vulnerability was discovered in EIP 1283, one of the originally included improvement proposals, only a couple of days before the upgrade’s implementation, forcing Ethereum developers to halt the upgrade.

After removing the faulty EIP 1283, Constantinople will implement four different Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), including EIP 1234 which will reduce miners’ reward. Besides, a new addition called St. Petersburg will occur on the same block number as Constantinople.This scheduled upgrade will pave the way for Ethereum to become a highly scalable platform.

Hard fork upgrades usually stir up crypto market’s volatility, often in the upward trajectory if everything goes as planned. Yet this time, Ether market has shown few signs to recover from Sunday’s precipitous price decline just one day before the hard fork.

Ether, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, saw a considerable sell-off last Sunday when its price dropped over 10 percent after having hit its three-month high of $165 earlier in the day. At press time, ETH is valued $139.86, posting a 1.29% increase in the past 24 hours, according to coinmarket cap.

However, a disturbing trend with ETH’s long to short ratio is unfolding. Data from Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex showed that ETH longs/shorts (L/S) ratio, the barometer of market sentiment, stood at 3.22 on Feb.21, the highest level since prior to ETH’s crash in last November, according to a popular crypto analyst on Twitter. The figure means further losses are in store for the cryptocurrency in the near-future.

The L/S ratio has reached such high level in eight occasions in Ethereum’s history with the one-day return of -4.1% in average and the average 10-day return of -16.8%. Thus historical data suggests ETH price may drop in the coming month.

According to the analysis of China’s blockchain media Gongxiang Finance, if the hard fork delays again, the price of ETH could fall by half.

Ethereum seems to gradully lose its grip on the decentralized applications (DApps) market due to its limits on TPS speed and scalability, and resentment grows in the Ethereum community after the repeated delay of the Constantinople release. Let’s hope the much-awaited Constantinople hard fork will not delay anymore, and wait to see what will it bring to the Ethereum network and the crypto market.