According to BlockBeats, the Unichain white paper states that to become a validator in UVN (Unichain Virtual Machine), node operators must stake UNI tokens on the Ethereum mainnet. The stake is tracked in Unichain's smart contract, which receives notifications of stake and withdrawal operations through native bridges. Unichain's blocks are divided into Epochs of fixed length. At the beginning of each Epoch, the current staked balance is snapshotted, Unichain chain fees are collected and the reward value of each staked token is calculated.

Participants can also stake and vote for a validator, thereby increasing that validator’s stake weight. A limited number of validators with the highest stake weight will be considered the active set and will be eligible to issue proofs and receive the designated rewards for that Epoch.