Shibarium runs on BONE, but the staking that secures it lives on Ethereum
ethereum:0x9813037ee2218799597d83d4a5b6f3b6778218d9 pays gas on Shibarium, yet the staking that secures the chain does not happen on Shibarium at all. Validators and delegators lock BONE in contracts sitting on Ethereum mainnet, per
@Shibtoken's documentation.
The design is modeled on Polygon's proof-of-stake architecture. A validator layer called Heimdall bundles periodic snapshots of Shibarium's state, called checkpoints, and submits them to Ethereum.
A separate layer, Bor, produces the blocks and executes transactions, with block producers drawn from the validator set.
Anchoring stake and checkpoints to Ethereum ties Shibarium's record to the larger network's security.