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What is XMP metadata?
Adobe's extensible metadata standard powers Lightroom edits, ratings, and star ratings.
XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) is Adobe's XML-based metadata format. Introduced in 2001, it can carry EXIF and IPTC data plus a huge amount more: your Lightroom edit history (every slider position), star ratings, color labels, face regions, panorama stitching info, and creator identifiers.
Because XMP is extensible, virtually every modern photo tool writes to it. That's how your edit stack survives when you export a DNG or move a catalog. It's also why "innocuous" photos can carry a fingerprint that ties them back to a specific machine, catalog, or user.