Transferring an active domain involves switching the domain registrar that provides the registration service, so after the transfer itself, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS entry updates through the new domain name registrar. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most domain extensions. Certain country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain involves several necessary steps and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a security option, which is being embraced by more and more domain registry operators. It’s a standard feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain name is locked, it won’t be possible to start a transfer process, so no one can even try to register your domain name. The domain lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered in the first place and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.