Ethereum will switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) likely already later this year in a much anticipated upgrade to Ethereum 2. The switch to PoS aims to make Ethereum both more secure and more sustainable by securing the network through Ether instead of mining. A second Eth2 update will address scaling through sharding at a later time.Danny Ryan, Researcher with Ethereum Foundation, has been a major driving force behind the Eth2 project. He joined us for a progress update and we chatted about how the protocol will work in its steady state, what has launched so far, what happens in The Merge, and how PoS will affect centralization tendencies.Topics covered in this episode:Danny's background and how he got into cryptoAn overview of Eth2 - Phase 0, Beacon ChainThe role of a validator and building blocksPenalties and rewards within the protocol including slashingWhat the epoch is and how it relates to finalityThe Proof-of-Stake mergeWhy Proof-of-Stake is favorable for security purposesWhat is the roadmap for sharding?Ethereum feesEpisode links:Ethereum CommunityEth R&D DiscordEthereum on GitHubEth ResearchEF on TwitterEF blogDanny on TwitterSponsors:Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenterExodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenterParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenterThis episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Martin Köppelmann. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/393