The explicitness of the artboards is one of the most valuable aspects that drove me into XD.

It is great for design (when you can see and edit things at once) and specially for team collaboration ("How will development see all states?" https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums/353007-adobe-xd-feature-requests/suggestions/38978644-component-states-to-development-design-specs).

Wouldn't it be great if:
1 - states were special (explicit) artboards, tied to the original object (like Overlays);
2 - the single regular Interaction pane could have triggers like "Hover/Mouse in/Mouse out" and actions like "State" (instead of requiring setting up states in the Design of a component before triggering them elsewhere in Prototype);
3 - matching the original object's dimension;
4 - inheriting the original object's contents as default (like with components);

Maybe this is a good way to put the "states" concept to leverage the best of explicit artboards and simple setup of interactions.