Haven't checked for a while
But curation APR on Hive has gotten quite a bit lower over the last year or so. While it used to be at around 8.9%, it has now dropped to only around 7.4% (I checked several accounts). This is around 1.5% less. But on the other hand, APR for staking Hive has increased from around 2.8% to around 3.8%, so around 1% more. This suggests to me that staking Hive is now a much more important part in the ecosystem (it has increased due to price being lower) and the importance of curation is now around 17% less.
Then again, posting on Hive has become more rewarding, since there is generally less activity and therefore more Hive going to less bloggers. In fact, blogging now makes up around 60% of my Hive curation rewards (if I would post daily) - which is a huge increase! Of course this depends a lot on how high the regular post payouts are, but it seems that there is a really good opportunity now to earn some Hive. And just maybe, Hive will once again become more valuable as well...
So in sum:
Curation -
Staking rewards +
Blogging ++
You can check your own stats at: https://hivestats.io
There also doesn't seem to be any real difference in terms of curation APR from voting on people's posts manually compared to using Hive Vote. The latter gives the opportunity to split up one's votes to more users and also automatically votes so one's voting power doesn't sit idle at 100%. I think it's a great tool and it can be coupled with manual curation by simply setting an upvote threshold at around 90% - this then allows for enough voting power for manual curation.
Conclusion
Not sure if a 1% increase in staking rewards is enough of an incentive to get people powering up Hive, but it's good to know that it has increased a bit. Like always it's also a good idea to hold some liquid Hive in case there are some more bigger price swings in the future (which there will be of course). Blogging is a good way and almost unique on Hive for earning some crypto. While it may not be a lot, it does add up when done regularly. I noticed that rewards also tend to be spread out much more evenly than some years ago. There are now many accounts earning $1-2 on their posts - back in the Steem days, I remember it being much more centralized. This is of course very good for user retention and even better if it actually gets powered up.
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