Transferring an existing domain name entails changing the company that handles the domain registration service, so after the transfer, you will have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS modifications through the new company. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most universal and country-specific domain extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain name entails a few necessary procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain. The lock is a safety option, which is being adopted by more and more registry organizations. It is a default feature supported by all gTLDs. If a domain name is locked, it will be impossible to start a transfer process, so nobody can even try to register your domain. The domain lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.