Transferring an active domain name involves changing the domain registrar that handles the registration service, so after the transfer itself, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS resource record modifications through the new domain registrar. The transfer process itself is standard with most generic and country-code domain extensions. Certain country-code extensions are more specific and involve different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain name entails a few basic procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a security option, which is being adopted by more and more domain name registry organizations. It’s a default feature supported by all generic TLDs. If a domain is locked, it won’t be possible to start a transfer procedure, so nobody can even try to take your domain name. The lock can be annulled only through the account where the domain name is registered in the first place and all new domain names that support this feature are locked by default the moment they are registered.