We are planing reactions to messages, but we do not currently plan to implement a “Status/Story” feature (see Delta Chat "Status" features).
we don’t really have a standalone Feature Proposal for reactions yet, but it is mentioned here: React / Reply to specific message
We are currently implementing that the user has the option to load existing emails on first start:
[WIP] Fetch old messages, ask the user about the "Show all emails" on start by Hocuri · Pull Request #1925 · deltachat/deltachat-core-rust · GitHub