The 2010s – MPEG-DASH, SRT, HESP, and WebRTC
It was in the noughties that some of the most seminal streaming giants first emerged, but it was in the 2010s that live-streaming claimed it’s true moment of glory. Throughout the decade video consumption grew exponentially. And with public appetite for on-demand streaming services surging, the chaotic web of technologies was crying out for simplification.
In 2010, a group of streaming and media companies including Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe united to form an industry streaming standard – Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH). The way MPEG-DASH works is very similar to HLS. Data is segmented into chunks and decoded for playback. The key difference is that, unlike HLS, MPEG-DASH was developed as an open-source, codec-agnostic standard.
MPEG-DASH marked a major shift in the direction of standardization, but it certainly didn’t bring further innovation to a halt. After acquiring Global IP Solutions in 2010, Google developed its own open-source project – Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC).
WebRTC was designed to enable real-time, peer-to-peer communication between browsers. The open-source, plugin-free framework allowed developers to facilitate real-time communication within browser-based software without intermediary servers. It has since become one of the most widely used streaming protocols for online communications with a market value of $9.56 billion in 2025 that is expected to reach $94.07 billion by 2032.
By 2012 another streaming protocol had emerged. Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) was developed by Haivision and first demoed at the International Broadcasting Convention in 2013. This open-source video transport protocol was designed to deliver low latency, optimized streams over unpredictable networks. By 2017, SRT was released as on open-source protocol on GitHub and Haivision teamed up with Wowza to create the SRT alliance.
At the close of the decade, in 2019, a new type of HTTP-based protocol emerged. High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP) was first introduced by THEO Technologies at the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters.
The adaptive HTTP-based protocol replaced the standard segmentation-based streaming approach with an innovative frame-based approach. The objective was to maintain lower latency and better viewer experiences at scale over standard HTTP infrastructure and content delivery networks (CDNs). By 2020, HESP partnered with Synamedia to form an organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption and wider standardization of the HESP streaming protocol - the HESP Alliance. Following the acquisition of THEO Technologies by Dolby in 2024, the alliance has since been disbanded but the HESP protocol remains in use.
The 2020s and beyond
Over the last couple of years, streaming services for entertainment and communications have gone from novelty to necessity. And now an even wider range of products have started to emerge. Products like live and on-demand fitness, live e-commerce, video game streaming, and even telehealth.
The worldwide virtual fitness market is projected to reach a value of $106.4 billion by 2030. In China, live commerce already outperforms traditional commerce and is set to surpass the one trillion dollar valuation mark by the end of 2026 . And, fueled by increased adoption of video streaming apps of mobile devices, game streaming platforms like Twitch are going strong (with billions of hours watched on the platform in 2025 alone).
Since the start of the decade, streaming protocol advancements have continued at a healthy pace, with the development of the following new protocols:
Ardent Streaming Protocol (ASP) | 2022: Released as a proprietary technology by YoloLiv, ASP is a smart streaming protocol that works by storing and transmitting larger volumes of redundant data. In so doing, ASP reduces quality loss even under unstable internet conditions.
Adaptive Reliable Transport (ART) |2022: A joint venture by Teradek and Amimon, ART supports both real-time and bi-directional streaming between two ART systems.
Media Relay Version 2 (MRV2) | 2022: Developed by Triton Digital, this proprietary streaming transport protocol was designed for use between Triton Digital’s master control room and CDN to expedite and improve server-side ad insertion.
High Efficiency Streaming Protocol Live (HESP.live) |2022: released by THEO Technologies (now Dolby OptiView), HESP.live uses the HESP protocol to enable live interactivity. It was the first HTTP-based real-time video streaming infrastructure capable of achieving sub-second latency at scale.
WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol (WHIP) | 2025: Developed in collaboration with Millicast (now part of Dolby laboratories), WHIP is an open IETF-defined standard. A modern alternative to older ingestion protocols like RTMP, WHIP simplifies how live media streams are ingested into streaming platforms using WebRTC.
Arguably the most impactful protocol of recent years, however, is Media over QUIC (MoQ). MoQ is a next-generation streaming protocol that leverages modern technologies including QUIC, WebTransport and HTTP/3 to overcome the challenges associated with traditional streaming protocols based on TCP. Using QUIC’s UDP-based multiplexing, low-latency connection setup, and congestion control, MoQ delivers media efficiently and achieves sub-second latency (even across unpredictable network conditions). With global audiences expecting increasingly seamless streaming experiences, MoQ marks a significant milestone for developers and streaming platforms.
The protocol is still being developed as an open standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and a final standard is expected to be released in 2026. In 2025, Cloudflare launched the first global MoQ relay network on its existing infrastructure, marking an important milestone toward practical adoption. The same year, real-time video streaming platform, nanocosmos, unveiled an upgraded global streaming infrastructure based on MoQ, marking the first MoQ-based real-time streaming solution on a CDN foundation that is ready for worldwide deployment.
What’s next for streaming?
The streaming industry as we know it today has been heavily influenced by protocol development over the decades.
Now, as demand for seamless content delivery mounts, the industry continues to strive towards higher levels of video quality. Latency reduction remains a key priority in 2026 and MoQ is currently the leading player - redefining the industry standard for ultra-low-latency streaming at scale.
Today, the influence of AI is also at play, with AI-powered algorithms being used to optimize content delivery with predictive analytics. New challenges are also present. Tariffs introduced by the Trump administration targeting hardware and networking equipment, risk impairing wider adoption of cutting-edge codecs, protocols and low-latency standards. But despite these unknowns, one thing is clear: streaming protocols have come a long way since the 90s and innovation isn’t slowing down just yet.
To learn even more about the history of streaming protocols, including additional industry insights, read our whitepaper.
