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