Most chains let anyone push a token balance into any address for free. That is why "holders" is a nearly meaningless metric almost everywhere — an airdrop to 100,000 addresses costs the sender gas and nothing else.
The XRP Ledger works differently, and the difference is worth understanding if you are building anything that reads token data.
There is no token contract
XRPL tokens are not contracts. Issuance, transfer, trading and freezing are protocol features. A token is a balance denominated against an issuer account, and to hold one you must first create a trustline to that issuer.
That trustline is an explicit, on-ledger opt-in. Nobody can push a balance at you without it.
