The Hive Blockchain ecosystem designates the first day of each month as "Hive Power Up Day" or #HPUD. Powering up $HIVE is approximately the same as staking tokens on other blockchains, with perhaps some important exceptions.
Hive, functions as a governance token, Hive Power or (HP) is used to voted for witnesses (validators) and for proposals to be funded for Hive. Only staked or power-up Hive counts towards voting. A friend of mine 
A current list of proposals can be see on Peakd.com at https://peakd.com/me/proposals. One of the interesting notes here is that the return proposal sets the minimum bar for getting a proposal funded and that threshold is currently at - 37,204,872! Getting a proposal funded requires a compelling case, and effective lobbying. Another friend of mine 
I'll be contributing narration, writing, and platform support for Eco's endeavors. I know without question he is enthusiastic about building and generating joyful energy in the Hive ecosystem.
I continue to acquire more Hive with a dollar cost average strategy - making modest purchase of Hive throughout the month. After powering up today, it brought me up to 3,200 Hive Power which, ranks me at 3,164.
One of the most interesting mechanism of Hive, is voting or curating posts. When a user upvotes a post on Hive the assign real value to it - some combination of Hive and Hive Backed Dollars (HBD). A very compelling part of the mechanism, is that the upvoter (or curator) receives 50% of that reward. This makes for a compelling motivation to accumulate and power up Hive.
Hive can also be delegated to another user. I had an interesting experience with this with a 10,000 HP delegation from 