Including community curators/moderators I think we're at around 60, but given the times and post activity lately among other things we've been meaning to reduce it and maybe give some new (or old) ones a try.
beneficiaries are awesome but sadly not used much, I'd love to see it being used in more non-profit ways for everyone involved, like sending part to projects that assist the whole ecosystem (think the DHF or POSH (before its current issues)), in that regard I don't see how it could be abused if some authors prefer attention over rewards for certain posts but with the low user activity today I don't see many craving the attention neither.
Things can change quick, though.
I'm sure there's some old curators around who would be happy to come back.
That's a good point, the likeliness is low and wouldn't slip by the community if it started happening.
After all these years I am still of the mind that Hive is going to mass onboard and become a mainstream thing within the next 2-7 years. It might happen sooner, but time goes quickly when you're not thinking about it.
I see OCD as instrumental in the adoption and onboarding.