Ethereum Merge: Explained like I am 5

The upcoming Ethereum network merge is one of the most discussed, hyped and controversial topics recently and it's actually poorly understood by the majority of people within the blockchain space and outside of it. Even though some of you reading this probably have a basic or even advanced understanding of it, I will try to do an ELI5 version for those who have no idea what it means but would like to learn more about it. You can try reading Vitalik's blog posts but trust me, his blog posts can make a very smart person completely question their intelligence.

First of all, let's quickly explain Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake. These are the consensus mechanisms used in distributed networks in order to keep them secured. In PoW, the network is secured by miners who are the ones who own the mining hardware and use electricity, in exchange for block rewards (ETH) and some transaction fees. In PoS, the network is secured by validators who have to stake their coins (ETH). Advantage: Electricity is reduced by 99%.

Now, the main purpose of the merge, is to transition the PoW Ethereum chain to PoS in order to reduce energy waste, increase security and introduce sharding (let's leave this behind for now), all without disrupting the running network. So, imagine this:

A car is driving on the driveway. This car uses gas as fuel (PoW) and it carries millions of passengers (Network users; idk man it's a pretty big car). The goal of the merge is to change the engine of the car from fuel to electricity (PoS) without the car having to stop and/or crash. So as the car is on the road, the developers who are driving, have been developing an electric engine (PoS) for the past 1.5 years, in order to replace the current gas engine (PoW) with it. If it's successful, the engine will be changed without any passenger noticing. This means that users who are for example, liquidity providers on a DEX, will continue doing so after the merge is completed, without anyone noticing. If someone uses the AAVE protocol for a loan, nothing will be affected. It's a pretty big deal if the network manages to transition from "gas to electricity" without disruptions, as it will allow it to scale, be more secure and environmentally friendly without any user noticing.

I hope this clears it up for some of you. I would love to write more about the benefits and risks of this milestone, as well as the future of the network but that would take days (probably until the actual merge). But if you liked it, I could write more about it next time.