Trustlines: Why XRPL Holder Counts Are Hard to Fake

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.

Trustlines cost the holder money

Each trustline raises the holder's XRP reserve requirement. The reserve is not a fee — you get it back when you close the line — but it is capital locked for as long as you hold the token.

The consequence: every holder made a small economic commitment. You cannot manufacture a million holders cheaply, because each one costs the holder, not you.

Current leaders by holder count:

Token	Holders	Trustlines
RLUSD	69,204	99,640
CORE	62,751	72,009
PHNIX	29,013	29,550
CSC	28,862	60,389
ARMY	22,082	22,448
EUR	15,068	88,955

Reading the holders-to-trustlines gap

Both numbers are published, and the ratio is more informative than either alone:

const { tokens } = await (await fetch(
  'https://api.xrpl.to/v1/tokens?limit=50&sortBy=holders&sortType=desc'
)).json();

for (const t of tokens) {
  const stickiness = t.holders / Math.max(t.trustlines, 1);
  console.log(t.name, stickiness.toFixed(2));
}

Ratio near 1 — almost everyone who ever opened a line still holds a balance
Ratio near 0 — accounts opened, traded out, and never closed the line

A low ratio is not automatically bad. It describes a token people passed through rather than held, which is exactly what you would expect from something traded actively.