Transferring an active domain involves changing the registrar that provides the domain name registration service, so after the transfer itself, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS record updates through the new registrar. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most generic and country-code TLD extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different steps, but in the general case transferring a domain name involves a few basic procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a security feature, which is being embraced by more and more registry organizations. It’s a standard feature supported by all generic top-level domain names. If a domain is locked, it will not be possible to start a transfer procedure, so nobody can even try to steal 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.