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This isn’t the quite the scenario he was talking about. The Wormhole exploit is just a bug that could’ve occurred even if the bridge didn’t cross chains.

Despite being large, it was still an isolated incedent compared to the multi-chain heist one could pull off with a 51% attack on a single chain.

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It's also a pretty dumb article which is very surprising coming from Vitalik. 51% attacks of the sort he describes are (remotely) possible whenever a blockchain interacts with any sort of system, not just another blockchain.

In his example, someone uses a bridge to create wrapped Eth on another chain, and then 51% attacks Ethereum, returning the Eth they used to themselves, while keeping the wrapped Eth on the other chain.

It's just as easy to have a scenario where someone sends Eth to an exchange, sells it, and then does the same thing.

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