Transferring an active domain name involves changing the registrar company that provides the domain name registration service, so after the transfer itself, you will have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS entry modifications through the new domain registrar. The transfer process is standard with most Top-Level Domain extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain name involves a few necessary procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a security feature, which is being embraced by more and more domain registry organizations. It’s a standard feature supported by all generic TLDs. If a domain is locked, it will not be possible to start a transfer process, so nobody can even try to register your domain. The lock can be annulled only through the account where the domain is registered and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.