I understand your initial thoughts. Just something I kind of want to do. How would one avoid getting scammed? I've tried to look into doing it myself, but I haven't seen any guides to really switch from PoW to PoS or converting to a smart contract coin or anything.
So, your intention to replace the consensus that used by the old coin into the new consensus that is massively used now? Why don't you try to learn from what already done by ethereum POS merge? this will give you a small insight about what must be done first. The fact that changing the consensus means you shall implement the new code. I think that ethereum POS implementation proposal can give you best answer for that