Transfer Lock
A status that blocks a domain from transferring to another registrar until it is explicitly unlocked.
- glossary
Transfer Lock (also called a registrar lock; EPP status clientTransferProhibited) is a flag set by your registrar that prevents a domain from being moved to a different registrar without first being deliberately unlocked. When the lock is on, any attempt to initiate a cross-registrar transfer is rejected before it can proceed, even if the requester has the auth-code. It is one of the simplest and most effective defenses against domain hijacking: a thief who has compromised your account cannot quietly transfer the asset away as long as the lock is active. Best practice is to keep the transfer lock enabled at all times and only remove it for the brief window needed to complete a legitimate transfer.
Related keywords
- transfer lock
- registrar lock
- domain security
- EPP status
- domain transfer
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.