Transferring an existing domain involves changing the registrar company that provides the domain registration service, so after the transfer, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS entry modifications through the new registrar company. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most generic and country-code Top-Level Domain extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and involve different steps, but in the general case transferring a domain entails a few necessary steps and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a security feature, which is being embraced by more and more registry operators. It’s a default feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain is locked, it will be impossible to start a transfer procedure, so nobody can even attempt to take your domain name. The lock can be annulled only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domains that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.